Gloucester, Kecoughtan advance in Eastern Region softball

VIRGINIA BEACH — It doesn't matter how good a team is. When it comes time for the Eastern Region softball playoffs, the talk almost always centers on how great the Beach District teams are.

The Beach almost always sends at least one school to the Group AAA state tournament, and three of them (Princess Anne, Kempsville and Kellam) have won titles since 2003.

Gloucester and Kecoughtan sent the Beach schools on short trips home from Princess Anne during Monday's region quarterfinals.

The Dukes defeated Beach tournament champion First Colonial 2-1 when Taylor Distefano singled home Shelby Alto with two outs in the bottom of the eighth. The Warriors were one strike away from the end of their season when they scored three runs in the top of the seventh, then watched Maddy Morris fire off the last three of her season-best 17 strikeouts to wrap up a 5-3 win against Beach regular-season champion Landstown. Neither team needed Monday's steamy conditions to sweat to the very end.

"We get that a lot," Distefano said of the Beach-centric chatter. "Every time we come down here, they're dominant."

Now the two teams sit one win away from a trip to the state tournament. Kecoughtan (19-4) meets Southeastern District tournament winner Great Bridge (19-4) at 5 p.m. Tuesday, while Gloucester faces Southeastern regular-season champion Hickory (20-3) afterward. If they both win? A rematch of last week's pitchers' duel of a Peninsula District final, which Gloucester won 1-0 on a Distenfano RBI single.

For a while, it looked as though a defensive hiccup in the third inning was going to render Morris's dominance irrelevant, as two Warriors errors set the stage for three Eagles runs. But Allyson Babinsack turned on a two-out pitch in the fourth inning to score Alyssa Vetter and Brittany York to close the gap to 3-2.

Babinsack then started a last gasp rally in the seventh with a double to the right field fence. Then, with two outs, Heather Linkous took an inside fastball up the middle of the infield, scoring Babinsack and Gabby Jenkins and giving Kecoughtan the lead. Morris added an insurance run when she singled home Linkous.

"I just kept telling myself 'These are the moments I thrive on,'" Linkous said. "This is my senior year. I'm not ready for the season to be done."

Linkous is one of seven senior Warriors, but the freshman Morris led the way. She had at least two strikeouts in six of the game's seven innings, fanning the side in the seventh to make sure the lead stood up.

"We came in as the underdog, but I had a feeling we would pull it together," Morris said. "We've gone through too much; we were not losing like this. I knew we would rebound."

Added Warriors coach Mark Christman: "They were loose. They knew people would underestimate them. But they were confident, and they knew they'd get the job done."

Gloucester took a 1-0 lead in the third inning when Rihannon Miller singled home Hannah Joyce, and it looked as though that would be enough thanks to the Dukes' own overwhelming pitcher. Makayla Jenkins recorded 10 strikeouts in the first four innings, then added her 11th to start the fifth.

But the Patriots tied the score in the fifth, and Gloucester stranded runners in scoring position during the bottom of the fifth and sixth.

"This felt like a game that would never end, but I knew that when it did, it would end quickly," Dukes coach Red Lindsay said.

Fortunately for Lindsay, it was Distefano that provided the finale. After Alto reached first on an error and advanced to second, Distefano laced a single to center field, and Alto beat the throw home.

"There was a lot of pressure, but I feed off it," said Distefano, who replaced Jenkins on the mound in the seventh and struck out four over two scoreless innings. "I do better when I'm in a jam."